Toronto ordered 150 hybrid buses to incorporate into their mass transit system, according to the Toronto Star . It sounds similar to a project in New York City that has "180 Orion VII's in use now, with orders that will see more than 500 on the road by the end of the year."

 

 

 

Toronto's ordering the same type of bus.

 

A quick quote from Paul Fleuranges, spokesman for New York City Transit: "They are performing as well as or even a little better than we expected, and doing exactly what we wanted, which is to contribute less to pollution and increase fuel mileage."

It isn't really a surprise that this car is extremely fuel efficient. I mean, bobsledders figured out that this design was aerodynamic a long time ago.

But Volkswagon took that extra step and made a bobsled with a diesel engine. It is, in fact, actually a car. It seats two (arguably), gets roughly 235 miles per gallon of diesel fuel and is perched at the very cutting edge aerodynamic technology. Of course, this comcept car has been around since 2002, and we're still no where near seeing it on our roads.

The car's technology comes from it's unique shape and it's ultra-light body. The frame is actually made of magnesium, an extremely light metal, and the outer skin is reinforced with carbon fiber. The one cylinder engine is made of aluminum and sits on top of the rear axle. The car is only a bit more than three feet high and weighs less than 700 lbs.

It might seem like a death trap and, if you got in a head-on with an SUV, it would be. But the car is surprisingly safe for its size, employing an excellent roll-avoidance system that makes the car virtually impossible to flip.

So...the car of the future was officially here four years ago. It could have been (and maybe still could be) a whole new class of vehicle. But nobody wants the passenger to straddle the driver in what looks to be the child of a VW Bug and a bobsled. The technology is in our hands. We choose not to use it.

We've been waiting for this one, imagining the day when we can pick up a product at the grocery store, scan the bar-code, and discover, for real, what the product is about. Sure, we can read the froofy language on the side of the can – quote Eddie Izzard – “This jam was made by groovy people, out of fruit that agreed to be in the jam in the first place.”

But we want to tap into an international database of consumer opinions with a boop of our bar-code scanner. Bill Tomlinson , a researcher at the University of California at Irvine, has made just such a database available. It's called “GreenScanner.”

Quoting Greenscanner: "This site is a public database of opinions about the environmental friendliness of various products. It has been designed for use with network-enabled mobile devices so you can use it at the food store."   Unfortunately it has not been designed to be easy on the eyes.  Be Careful.

Of course, there's no hundred-person-strong team of researchers finding all this information and typing it into the database (yet.) But Tomlinson feels that leaving it in the public's hands is probably a better idea anyway.

So now, standing in the aisle is no longer a passive process. We can discover information and, where there is no data, we can rate the products as we choose. It's cool technology, it's empowering individuals, and it's allowing us to more environmentally informed decisions. This...GreenScanner... is the essence of EcoGeek.

 Via: WorldChanging

A team of researchers at the University of North Carolina has demonstrated a new method of converting coal into diesel fuel. The results were released with the usual media-manipulating fanfare and heralded as a source of "green diesel."

"Green diesel?" Come again?

Isn't that a bit like calling a slap a "polite punch?"

According to a National Geographic report, the scientists used a compound chemical process to rearrange the carbon atoms in coal, yielding ethane gas and diesel fuel. The resulting fuel "is much cleaner burning than conventional diesel, even cleaner burning than gasoline," according to a Rutgers University chemist Alan Goldman, cited in the report. The technology relies on two chemical processes, one of which independently was awarded the Nobel Prize last year. So it's clear this is world-class science.  

But green? Ecogeeks remain skeptical.

Take a good look at your computer screen and realize: Nothing is Moving. Yet, it is powered, constantly, as if it were a mobile display. E-Ink, the ecogeek's favorite display, has conquered this by only needing power to change its display while LCD screens have always needed constant power to maintain the display.

  

No Longer! Citizen has created the Memory LCD , which retains its image even when turned off. Of course, this thing is a long way away from being a computer monitor. A good start though, and a good alternative to the slow refresh rate of E-Ink, if it comes to that (though don't ever expect this to be flexibile like E-Ink.)

If you're wondering, the picture here is a point-of-sale screen, showing that 500 grams of bananas costs 395 yen, and that the banana's come from Ecuador (and also where Ecuador is, just in case the consumer is interested.)

Via Engadget  

Okay, I don't have a copy of the text and I don't have a login for TimesSelect -- then how, you ask did I get this information? I have my sources/mother... -- but there's a New York Times op-ed today about the theory of the "methane burp," or as the headline puts it, "The Big Burp Theory of the Apocalypse."

Very flashy. Can't wait for the movie.

 

"Snakes on a Plane II: Burps at the Apocalypse."

 

At any rate, the idea is that under the sea (under the sea!), there is a store of methane that's waiting for warmer climes to bubble up and then, you know, make all of the oceans boil like giant seafood-frying... oceans. The beginning of the column looks like this:

 

 

Some preview that is! At least we know it's about fear-mongering and burping, right? 

 

If you've got TimesSelect, check it out here.

 

For those of us without, here's the general idea of methane burps as extracted from an AP story that ran on CNN.com a-way back in 2000:

 

 

And:

 

 

So that's exciting. If that's not enough, check out this explanation from the UK's Environment Agency.

 

Via NYT. And Mom.

Man, you can't swing a data-obsessed scientist anymore without hitting a data-gathering robot of some kind.

 

A "robot" named Spray is "swimming" from Greenland to Spain, sending daily e-mail updates to its fleshen masters, who can adjust its course via the things GPS receiver. Ooh, a data-gathering robot with a GPS receiver. How creative.

 

Okay yeah, it's cool that this robot will be gathering data on salinity, temperature and other things to keep tabs on the ocean's climate, but it's a little creepy that the scientists in charge want to deploy a ton more by 2011 and call them robotic underwater sentinels.

 

Also, am I wrong in saying that it looks a lot more like a missile than a robot?

 

How hard would it have been, Scripps Institute of Oceanography and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, if you're already going to the trouble of calling it a robot to give it googly eyes or a square, painted-on mouth?

 

All I'm saying is I wouldn't want to be reaching for  the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and accidentally grab a torpedo. But what do I know? 

 

Via Popular Science.  

How are "nanogenerators" like aphrodisiacs? They turn body movement into electricity.

Clever folks at the Georgia Institute of Technology have built a tiny prototype generator that generates electricity through the flexing of zinc oxide nanowires. They're saying that since the stuff isn't toxic, you could arguably implant it in a human muscle and allow human movement to create electricity. 

 

While cool, that's a little creepy, so here's another example from LiveScience.com's story on the tiny powerhouses: 

 

 

Or, you could envision dancing monkeys wearing shoes with nanogenerators in them. I know which one I prefer.

I imitate Vespas when I see them. Mreeee-eeee-eeeee. Always. Although I know it must be terribly annoying to Vespa pilots, I can't help it. It's not like I don't like them. I think they're great. Subtly hilarious, even. Like this picture. 

Anyway, now I'll be imitating them with even more vigor and/or glee, as it turns out that Piaggio , Vespa's daddy, is dangling its feet in hybrid waters.

Why, here are some words about it right now!

Piaggio and the Council of the City of Milan decided to launch a collaboration via the setting up of a meeting table ... "to check and study certain proposed applications that lead to the use of two wheeled transport with a nil or very low environmental impact."

 

It's sort of the natural opposite to trying out hybrid SUVs. Okay, maybe the opposite to hybrid SUVs would be coal-powered Vespas, but you see what we're getting at; even vehicles with "good" gas mileage can be improved upon. 

 

 Grazie to TreeHugger , BoingBoing .

OK, I don't know why I think it's so great that someone created a potato-powered sound system using a 500 lb bag of potatoes. I don't even know if this is officially ecogeeky, since, after all, this isn't doing anything to save the environment. But, I guess, now we know how to power our iPod's when the apocalypse comes. Though, probably potatoes will be useful for more traditional purposes by then.

Full Article Here

The founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore , has an article in the Washington Post this week championing nuclear power. I know this sounds really weird. But it sounds less weird if we consider that the coal industry is flattening the mountains of Appalachia, killing workers in mines and emitting 67% of America's carbon dioxide.

 

If we're worried about global warming (and here at EcoGeek, we are) then we need viable alternatives. The only real alternative we have right now is nuclear. EcoGeek, as of yet, doesn't have a clear position beyond “More Research is Necessary,” but Moore's opinions have swayed us somewhat.

He mentions the commonly listed claims against nuclear power and rebuts each in turn. He does not mention uranium mining as a disadvantage of nuclear power, though I consider it to be possibly the second most environmentally hazardous part of the whole process. But it's hard to imagine uranium mining doing more damage than mountain-top-removal coal mining.

Weakening his argument, though, is that Moore is co-chairing the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition with Christine Todd Whitman , Bush's head of the EPA. Environmentalists hate Christine Todd Whitman, mostly because she censored government documents concerning the threat of global warming. This coalition (paid for by the nuclear power industry) is either an amazing and inspiring alliance of people who love the earth and people who have the technology to save it, or it may be an underhanded and evil ploy.

But, for now, we're listening. Nuclear power is a few steps away from being the dream of an EcoGeek. And, really, it's hard to imagine anything could be more destructive than coal.

 Read Moore's whole article here

 MSI is working on the world's first MP3 player with built-in solar charging.  It's a versatile devise, in more than just power supply.  It's also a FM radio, picture browser and voice recorder.  Four gigs is a bit limited for my tastes, but I am impressed that built in solar charging is moving to mass-market so quickly.

Panels are getting more efficient and the devices are getting smaller and less power-thirsty.  The Mega Player does use a traditional hard drive though, rather than solid-state (and more efficient) flash memory.  But we're OK with small steps. 

 

No word on when this little machine will be collecting rays at your local Best Buy, but the production model should be out at the end of the year. 

 

Spotted at TreeHugger Via MobleMag